Research from the University of Colorado Boulder suggests that young pikas at a site near Rocky Mountain National Park have declined dramatically over 40 years, raising concerns about whether pikas could disappear from the area entirely.

Pikas are small, furry creatures closely related to rabbits, but distinguished by their short, rounded ears. Pikas live in alpine areas, and their prime habitat is rocky taluses, or piles of rocks. The research team studied pikas at the Niwot Ridge Long Term Ecological Research site, located north of Nederland, approximately 10 miles south of the national park. The team has data on the pikas there spanning 40 years, with 24 years of data within that time frame. The CU Boulder researchers calculated that the proportion of juvenile pikas they trapped and re

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